Societal trends ultimately impact education by changing the expectations of various constituencies. Calls for transformation in higher education have grown in intensity, volume, and clarity. Trends identified in the 1980s have had an increasingly apparent impact. Visionary business leaders identified the importance of education and lifelong learning for a viable economy and society; commissions and task forces studied society’s changing needs and recommended significant overhaul. Today’s students, different in composition, in needs, and in expectations, demand a different form of education. Changing technology increasingly adds urgency to these demands. Educators must choose whether to lead this transformation or lose relevance.
Early Indicators for Trends to Come in Higher Education
John Naisbitt’s bestseller, Megatrends (1982), alerted common citizens to the most significant trends transforming society. He pointed out that the United States had moved from an industrial society to one based on the creation and distribution of knowledge. Though the trends identified were not directed at educational institutions, most of them are relevant.
Movement from an industrially-based society to a knowledge-based society, and from a national economy to a world economy, called for a more knowledgeable citizenry of lifelong learners skilled at functioning in a diverse society.
Transformation from forced technology to a high- technology, high-touch existence foreshadowed the role that technology would come to play in the delivery of education and the way people learn and work.
Greater numbers of individuals would need skills in leading and collaborating in order to adapt to the change from a centralized to a decentralized society in which organizations would be structured around networks rather than hierarchies.
We needed a citizenry composed of critical thinkers who were responsible for their own learning in order to transition from short to long-term thinking, from either/ or decisions to multiple choices, and from a representative democracy to a more participatory democracy.
Business World Focused on Learning with Greater Intensity
As the business world recognized these trends and the need to transform itself, it began to place far greater emphasis on the development of leaders throughout organizations and on learning for all employees. Key individuals greatly influenced the learning of millions who were already in the workplace; this, in turn, caused the general populace to expect more from people as they entered the work environment.
W. Edward Deming, once shunned in the United States, transformed work as his Total Quality Management (TQM) became the catch-phrase. Most of the practices promoted by his 14 points required critical thinking skills, inspection of product quality, reflection and analysis, problem identification and design of solutions, a focus on quality rather than quantity, measurement of effectiveness, and the cultivation of environments that promoted risk-taking. He also recommended that people learn to solve problems cooperatively rather than competitively.
In his book, The Fifth Discipline (1994), Peter Senge characterized organizations as learning entities. He identified five disciplines requisite for all employees: systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, and team learning. Senge states, “These might just as well be called the leadership disciplines as the learning disciplines. Those who excel in these areas will be the natural leaders of learning organizations.” Systems thinking has the distinction of being the “fifth discipline” since it serves to make the results of the other disciplines work together for the benefit of business.
Stephen Covey, a key contributor to the adult education market, authored the book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (2004) that sold over ten million copies. The book stresses balance in personal and professional effectiveness that can be achieved through a paradigm shift, a change in perception about how the world works. Covey features perceptions and behavior regarding productivity, time management, positive thinking, developing “proactive muscles” by acting with initiative rather than reacting, and more.
As increasing numbers of businesses incorporated staff development into their human resource departments, there was an explosion of learning throughout the business world. This meant that, instead of seeking educational opportunities from institutions of higher education, businesses developed and offered their own learning opportunities.
The business community also loudly expressed their concerns that college graduates lacked the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to succeed in the workplace. A 1991 report from the Department of Labor, The Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS report), drew widespread attention from academics, business leaders, government, and the public. Its purpose was to determine the skills young people needed for success in the world of work and to encourage a high-performance economy characterized by high-skill, high-wage employment. They concluded that a high-performance workplace requires workers who have a solid foundation in basic literacy and computational skills, in the thinking skills necessary to put knowledge to work, and in the personal qualities that make workers dedicated and trustworthy. High-performance workplaces also require other competencies: the ability to manage resources, to work amicably and productively with others, to acquire and use information, to master complex systems, and to work with a variety of technologies. This report came to be a primary driver in the design of curricula and measurement of student success.
Academic Commissions and Studies Focused on Transformation
Within the last 17 years a number of special commissions and task forces have called for a dramatic overhaul of higher education. In a variety of ways they call upon higher education to raise their standards to better meet the needs of society.
In 1988, the American Association of Community and Junior Colleges produced Building Communities, a report that “charted a course for the 21st century community college fashioned around the ideals of partnership, responsiveness, and college-as-community/community-as-college. The authors of Building Communities saw a nation on the verge of fragmentation, in danger of losing all cohesiveness and sense of common purpose.” They envisioned “a re-integrated America, accepting of its diversity, but dedicated to its common, core values...” They went on to state:
As we enter the Information Age, we face the very real challenge of redirecting the course of American education so that young people will be ready to wrestle with the demands of the new global economy, the new realities facing government, and the new challenges of a multicultural world… The civil society is the wellspring of our spirit as a people. Preparing the next generation for a lifelong commitment to civil society is one of the most important challenges facing educators and communities (Commission on the Future of Community Colleges, 1988).
The Wingspread Group on Higher Education (1993) sounded an alarm to the public when they stated, “A disturbing and dangerous mismatch exists between what American society needs of higher education and what it is receiving. Nowhere is the mismatch more dangerous than in the quality of undergraduate preparation provided on many campuses. The American imperative for the twenty-first century is that society must hold higher education to much higher expectations or risk national decline.” The commission based their conclusions on outcomes from a number of major studies.
In a 1993 National Adult Literacy Survey, the largest effort of its type ever attempted, the Educational Testing Service reported that only about one-half of four-year graduates were able to demonstrate intermediate levels of competence in reading and interpreting prose such as newspaper articles, in working with documents such as bus schedules, and in using elementary arithmetic to solve problems involving costs of meals in restaurants.
The Educational Testing Service reported that 56 percent of American-born, four-year college graduates were unable to consistently perform simple tasks, such as calculating the change from $3 after buying a 60¢ bowl of soup and a $1.95 sandwich.
A comment on a survey by the Educational Testing Service was quoted to say, “We note with concern that the 1993 survey findings reflect a statistically significant decline from those on an earlier survey conducted in 1985.”
In 1998 a significant report resulted from work led by Ernest Boyer with a group called The Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University. This report, Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for America’s Research Universities, identified ten ways to change undergraduate education: make research-based learning the standard, construct an inquiry-based freshman year, build on the freshman foundation, remove barriers to interdisciplinary education, link communication skills and course work, use information technology creatively, culminate with a capstone experience, educate graduate students as apprentice teachers, change faculty reward systems, and cultivate a sense of community.
In 2005 The Commission on Accountability in Higher Education of the State Higher Education Executive Officers issued its report entitled Accountability for Better Results: A National Imperative for Higher Education. They identified the following:
For the first time in decades the United States no longer leads the developed world in the rate of college completion. Both China and India are successfully educating thousands of scientists and engineers in order to compete in the global economy.
A large percentage of our workforce in science and technology comes from highly motivated international students, but this advantage is slipping.
We must do more than just provide the finest education in the world to a select few: we must provide all Americans with the skills they need to succeed in the global economy and lead satisfying, productive lives.
An improved system of accountability is needed that has, as its organizing principles, pride rather than fear, and aspirations rather than minimum standards. It will be rigorous because we cannot afford low aspirations or soft standards.
Real improvement in higher education will come when accountability in higher education is a democratic process through which shared goals are explicitly established, progress is measured, and work to improve performance is motivated and guided. It will include agreement on fundamental priorities and an effective, practical division of labor; it will focus on a few critical goals at every level of responsibility; and it will involve rigorous measurement and public reporting of results, followed by collaborative work to improve.
While these are but a sampling of the reports, they are consistent in their call for reform and for increasing rigor within higher education.
Change in Student Composition and Preparedness
The call for greater numbers to receive education beyond high school means that populations who formerly have not participated in higher education must now be recruited. Growth in population will come primarily from immigrants and various minorities. The groups identified for growth are known from historical precedent to be likely to need more help from services in order to achieve the desired rates. Projections point to the fact that as baby boomers age, society, as a whole, is aging. This means not only a loss in the workplace, but also increasing numbers of returning older students who are likely to attend college on a part-time basis.
In his book The Neglected Majority (1997), Dale Parnell offers a warning to policy makers related to high school students in the 25-75% range. He reports that they are often lost, and their needs remain unresolved. Many of them are identified as underachieving students: though they have the capacity, they have not acquired the knowledge, skills, and habits needed to succeed in college.
The 1988 report, Building Communities, had strong recommendations related to student access.
The nation’s community colleges should vigorously reaffirm equality of opportunity for all ages, races, and ethnic groups.
In pursuit of this objective, they urged every college to develop an aggressive outreach plan for disadvantaged students. Specifically, each college should create an early identification program with surrounding schools, focusing first on junior high school students. The emphasis of such a program should include both counseling and improved preparation.
They saw it as their central mandate that community colleges must continue to offer all students an open door, and reaffirm to minority students the promise of empowerment through education. “Without this opportunity, America will become a socially and economically divided nation. The spirit of community will be lost” (Commission on the Future of Community Colleges, 1988).
Changes in Student Expectations
Pat Cross describes the changes in composition, preparedness, and expectations for students in higher education over a 30-year period (DeZure, 2000). In the 1960s she identifies student protest, unrest, discontent, activism, and radicalism as prevalent. The 1970s featured the time of flourishing open admission despite poor past performance in high school; there was a great influx of first-generation students who were primarily sons and daughters of blue-collar workers. In the 1980s, the affirmative action period featured a significant increase in minority students and women.
Cross quotes Arthur Levine who describes the period of consumerism that influenced the students of the 1990s:
Higher education is not the central feature of their lives, but just one of a multiplicity of activities in which they are engaged every day…often not even the most important of these activities. Work and family often overshadow it. The relationship these students want with their college is like the one they already have with their banks, supermarkets, and other organizations they patronize. They want easy, accessible parking, short lines, and polite and efficient personnel and services. They also want high-quality products at low costs. They are willing to comparison shop—placing a premium on time and money.
Technology Has Caused the Challenges to Become More Urgent
In his 2005 bestseller, The World is Flat, Thomas L. Friedman describes ten converging forces brought about by technology which have made the opportunity for innovation available worldwide. His primary theme is that the United States has lost the advantage that it has long enjoyed and must deal with challenges that have not been adequately addressed thus far. He cites numerous examples of the successes currently enjoyed both in India and in China as their governments, international companies, and individual citizens take advantage of the opportunities now available to them. He cites three significant gaps causing the United States to lag behind.
A “numbers gap” of engineers and scientists is growing. This group has historically been an indicator of a country’s primary resource for innovation. According to the National Science Foundation the average age of half of America’s scientists is forty or over, and the age is rising. At the same time, both India and China are rapidly expanding their numbers with these same skills.
A wide array of prominent CEOs describe the “ambition gap”; they claim that it is not only lower wages that draw their companies to these developing countries but the increase in productivity as highly motivated workers are eager to increase their living standards.
The education gap is expanding for several reasons. Federal support for basic research has dropped 37% from 1970 to 2004. Stricter immigration laws prevent or discourage many foreign graduate students from choosing U.S. universities for their education. And standardized test scores in math among K-12 students are stagnating and deteriorating, revealing that the U.S. is not keeping pace. 44% of eighth graders in Singapore scored at the most advanced level, as did 38% in Taiwan; only 7% in the U.S. did so.
Friedman also speaks to the need of the U.S. to better teach students “how to learn” so that they can readily adapt their knowledge and skills to the rapidly changing challenges and opportunities. He identifies three eras of globalization with different drivers of integration: from 1492-1800, nations increased globalization; from 1800- 2000, companies led the way; since 2000 individuals have the newfound power to collaborate and compete globally. This means that individuals need to be prepared to take advantage of the opportunities made available through technology. He further points to the fact that the first two eras were dominated by Western cultures, but that this era will increasingly be dominated by non-Western and non-white cultures, resulting in “every color of the human rainbow taking part.”
Concluding Thoughts
The need for higher education to transform itself has been made increasingly clearer during the last twenty-five years. The challenges, however, are many. As Naisbitt stated in Megatrends, “Societies, like individuals, can handle only so many concerns at one time.” Educators need to heed this warning if they hope to be relevant as societal leaders and take charge of transforming education. Society might seek simplistic answers rather than see the complexity of the challenges facing the loosely connected system of higher education. A shared vision for the complex work of higher education is essential if an adequate number of competent, competitive graduates, well-suited to the needs of the 21st century are to be the result. The next module presents some of the many ways that educators and institutions are addressing this issue.
References
Commission on Accountability in Higher Education. (2005). Accountability for better results: A national imperative for higher education. Boulder, CO: State Higher Education Executive Officers.
Commission on the Future of Community Colleges. (1988). Building communities: A vision for a new century. Washington, DC: American Association of Community and Junior Colleges.
Covey, S. R. (2004). The seven habits of highly effective people: Powerful lessons in personal change. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Cross, K. P. (2000). Students: Portraits of students: A gallery tour. In D. DeZure (Ed.), Learning from Change: Landmarks in teaching and learning from Change magazine 1969-1999. Sterling, VA: Stylus.
Deming, W. E. (2000). The new economics for industry, government, and education. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.
Friedman, T. (2005). The world is flat: A brief history of the twenty-first century. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Naisbitt, J. (1982). Megatrends: Ten new directions transforming our lives. New York: Warner Books.
Parnell, D. (1997). The neglected majority. Washington, DC: Community College Press/American Association of Community Colleges.
Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS). (1991). What work requires of schools: A SCANS report for America 2000. Washington, DC: Department of Labor.
Senge, P. M. (1994). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization. New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell.
Wingspread Group on Higher Education. (1993). An American imperative: Higher expectations for higher education. Racine, WI: The Johnson Foundation.